A Tiv soup made from okra that has been dried and ground into a fine powder (gbodi), rather than from fresh okra. The powder is boiled in water and seasoned with pepper, ginger and black pepper.
Gbodi (dried, powdered okra), pepper, ginger, black pepper (yiye), water.
The gbodi powder is mixed with hot water and boiled, then seasonings such as pepper, ginger and black pepper are added.
Eaten with pounded yam (ruam kumen).
The Tiv food guide tivpeople.com describes gbodi as an okra soup made not from fresh okra but from dry okra: the okra is dried and ground into a fine powder, which is mixed with hot water and boiled before the seasonings, such as pepper, ginger and black pepper, are added. This archive's dictionary gives gbodi as "ground dried okra". Dried okra soup is still sold today: Daily Trust, reporting on Benue food sellers in 2021, found "dried okro" soup on their menus, alongside fresh okro soup, usually served as one of several soups with a bowl of pounded yam.
Gbodi is one of three Tiv okra soups. In atuu, okra is cut up and boiled in a pot; in atuu asha nase, whole boiled okra is ground on the grinding stone with no water added; in gbodi, the okra has been dried and powdered beforehand.
Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) is an erect annual 2 to 4 metres tall. According to the Useful Tropical Plants database, its young pods can be used fresh or dried, and because they are mucilaginous they are commonly used to thicken soups, stews and sauces. They are rich in pectin and a fair source of iron and calcium. The leaves can also be dried, crushed to a powder and stored. Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, lists okra among the oldest Tiv soup plants and records that women planted it on the yam farms during the early rains.
Sources: tivpeople.com, "Tiv Food" (Internet Archive copy, 25 January 2025); Daily Trust, "An abundance of soups", 1 April 2021; Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.); Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Bergsma and Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapter two.
Other Foods
See the Tiv people and the Tiv language in our Nigeria Heritage Archive: the states and local government areas where Tiv communities live, neighbouring peoples, population figures and sources.